And he isn't even involved in any arcane minimization schemes. ProPublica showed that he sold ~$4 billion in Amazon stock last year and paid a billion of it to the government.
Except it doesn't get per se, loans are taken out and paid back on a schedule smaller than the appreciation of the stocks which were used as collateral.
That's what that $1B was, and is relative scales we're talking about.
He only has a 1% effective rate if you change the definition of effective rate. I assume you're fine with making that change, but the federal government isn't currently.
Taxing unrealized capital gains isn't happening because Amazon is lobbying the federal government, it's a fundamental premise of the US tax code and starting to tax them is arguably unconstitutional (I'm not arguing it is or isn't, but I've seen arguments that it is unconstitutional from reasonable sources).
Your representatives don't have to accept Amazon's bribes, you know. They choose to do so because they're corrupt and convinced you to be mad at a different party entirely while they pocket the cash for future campaigns where they convince other people like you that they will serve your interests.
It has a Ballroom, and can host parties with hundreds of people.
Why? Because he just enjoys flying across the country and entertaining political elites out of the goodness of his heart? What could possibly be fishy here?
